There has been a long practice of pairing wine with food, but only recently has it been recognized that wine and music, if properly matched, may also enhance one another. In selecting both and wine and music, consumers often turn to well-known reviews for suggestions. With respect to wine, these reviews often include tasting descriptors and sometimes a wine score. These wine reviewers perform a valuable service to wine consumers, who often use the reviews and associated scores to make reasoned decisions as to whether or not they would enjoy the wine. However, there are many wine consumers that simply do not and cannot relate to the way that wine is described in most traditional wine reviews. Indeed, some have ridiculed the descriptors used by wine reviewers as being out of touch with how many folks perceive wine.
With respect to music, there has been a recent trend towards making customized playlists and suggesting new or related songs to a listener based on previous song, artist, or album selections and purchases. For example, the Apple's iTunes® Genius feature automatically generates a playlist of songs from the user's library which are similar to a user-selected song while the iTunes Sidebar recommends additional music selections for purchase from the iTunes Store based on selections a user makes within their music library.
Entities like Echo Nest have built databases and programs capable of categorizing music based at least in part characteristics such as tempo, tone, range, melody, harmony, rhythm and dynamics. After determining which songs a user already enjoys listening to, these databases and programs are able to predict additional songs that a user may enjoy by searching the database for songs with similar characteristics. Additionally, there has been a rise in popularity of Internet radio stations such as Pandora, which use algorithms to suggest songs that a user may enjoy based on the user's pre-selected “stations” of music or other artistic favorites. These trends allow music listeners to create customized music listening experiences, tailored to their own specific tastes and preferences.
Although others have observed some general associations between wine and music, the prior art has not created a comprehensive system or methodology of characterizing wines or music using one another's descriptors, much less matching wines with music based on each's characteristics. At most, the prior art has sparingly used general music references when describing a wine, such as “a symphony of tastes” or “high notes” and “low notes”. For example, no one has attempted to describe wine in a manner akin to a traditional wine tasting note using musical terminology to convey the expressions of the wine to the potential wine consumer.
A comprehensive database and matching system and method based on musical terminology and wine descriptors has not yet been utilized to pair wine and music selections, or suggest wine or music purchases. According to some embodiments, the present invention allows for the creation of a comprehensive database that may be used to match both wine and music by determining relationships based on a common (as between wine and music) musical or wine descriptor terminology. In addition, some embodiments of the present invention provide a method for using user preferences, previous purchases, and the stored characteristics of both wine and music to provide music selections, wine selections, and wine/music pairings that are tailored to a user's specific tastes.